The force of Forsythe: Legendary choreographer is subject of ICA exhibition

By Iris Fanger/For The Patriot Ledger

Monday

Nov 5, 2018 at 1:28 PMNov 6, 2018 at 9:43 PM

BOSTON – Making the impossible come to life is a theme of the exhibition “William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects” at The Institute of Contemporary Art.

Forsythe is one of the best ballet choreographers in the world and this exhibit is his first comprehensive U.S. exhibition. It includes sculptures, video installations and other interactive touches.

“Ballet deals with the impossible and possibility,” Forsythe said during a press viewing of the new exhibit last week. That concept is put to the test by museumgoers who attempt to navigate the first room. The show is based on the notion that choreography is the organization of objects moving in space, whether they are people or things. This first room is filled with 600 hanging white rings that Forsythe expects the visitor to use to cross the space, rather than the floor underneath.

Born and trained in the United States, Forsythe was a dancer for three years with the Joffrey Ballet before moving to Germany to perform with Stuttgart Ballet, where he began to choreograph works for the company. He also became an artist and an architect of space with many museum exhibitions to his credit.

Forsythe has come home to America after nearly 30 years in Germany where he was the artistic director of the state-supported Frankfurt Ballet (1984-2004), then formed his own company in 2005.

“My full-time job in Europe had ended,“ Forsythe remarked, allowing him to settle in a small town in Vermont. From there, he commutes to his appointment as a full professor at the University of Southern California six to eight weeks a year and to Boston where he has signed a five-year contract with the Boston Ballet as choreographer in residence. The ICA exhibit serves as an introduction to the new work he is making for the Boston Ballet, which premieres in March.

Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen calls Forsythe “the Michael Jordan of the ballet world,” referring to his world-wide popularity. Forsythe and Nissinen joined our group at the press tour of the exhibit last week. After walking through the introductory space, a wall-sized mirror that reflects the images of the crowd, we confronted the room with the hanging rings. Forsythe urged us “to traverse the room using only the rings,” observing that each of us must combine “weight, coordination and strength.” He was watching the spontaneous choreography created by ordinary people who attempted to follow his instructions.

The most agile stepper among us was the head of his technical crew who had flown in from Germany to oversee the mounting of the exhibit. Forsythe first dreamed up a space filled with hanging rings for the Venice Biennale in 2009.

The ICA exhibit spreads over 11 rooms that demand viewer participation. In one, a feather duster quivers in a rhythm that is tied to the heart beat of the person holding it. “If it flutters, you are alive,” Forsythe said. In another room, Forsythe is seen moving on two different films in his attempts to thwart the pull of gravity but he admits he was lying on the floor with the camera moving around and above him.

Other items to be manipulated include a series of heavy rubber tubing to be knotted and a final, large room filled with 80 small pendulums swinging on thin threads that must be maneuvered around carefully to avoid bumping into them. The reward is the view at the exit from the large floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the magnificent Boston Harbor.

Like the objects in the exhibit and the variety of ways to confront them, Forsythe’s ballets are known for movement derived from every style of dance. Forsythe combines dance with speech, speed, electronic music, lights that zig-zag in space, sometimes dangerous scenery, to send bodies contorting in unimaginable ways.

At an interview later in the day, he talked about his hero and role-model, the 20th century choreographer, George Balanchine. “I watch his ballets on film every day,” he said. When Forsythe was a young dancer, he said he hoped to work for Balanchine because he was trained in his style, but now says it’s “probably a good thing” that he went his own way without consciously copying him.

“I’ve looked at Balanchine’s reverential relationship to the steps but on the other hand, (I realized) that he saw the possibility of their evolution,” Forsythe said. “He was the most revolutionary, taking ballet into the most modern terrain.”

Like Balanchine, who trained as a classical dancer before transforming the art form for the 20th century, Forsythe is experimenting with movement to reflect the 21st century. But he still insists: “I come from ballet.”

The Forsythe exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, edited by Louise Neri and Eva Respini, senior curator at the ICA and curator of the exhibition that is available for purchase at the museum’s bookstore.